Sick Day
by konasmitchell
Summary: Young, braces wearing Logan is staying home from school sick with a cold.


From a young age, Logan always hated being sick. Being sick meant missing out on school. Missing school always meant missed lessons, getting behind, and mountains of makeup work. He never liked taking more than one sick day off from school at a time if he ever got sick, in fear that it would affect his acceptance into one of those high end schools so he could become a doctor.

This day started out like any other day, when Logan's mom wanted him to stay home from school. Logan woke up with a fever, runny nose, and a cough so bad that it sounded like his lungs would be coughed up at any second. Mama Mitchell would always say the same thing - "that's it little man, you're staying home." Hearing those words were basically the equivalent of finding out that there was no Santa. Logan begged and pleaded for his mom to let him go to school because he was alright, but the extreme amount of coughing always left him winded and never able to finish his words. Mama Mitchell carried him back upstairs and placed him in bed. "You know, you're hardly ever sick. Missing one day of middle school won't affect your career in the long run," mama Mitchell told Logan as she tucked him in.

"But you don't really know that!" Logan responded, in between coughs.

"Listen, I wish I could stay home with you today to take care of you, but I just have so many important things to get done at work. If you're up to it later, I'll let you have your friends over for a little visit after school lets out."

"Thanks, mama."

"You're welcome, my future doctor." Mama Mitchell kissed Logan on the forehead, and headed towards the door. "If you need me, you know my work number. Get plenty of sleep, alright? I know how much you want to get on that computer and do your schoolwork, but you really need your rest."

Logan let out a sigh and replied, "Alright, I won't get on the computer and I'll get some sleep."

As much as he loved sleep and was always up to getting more, Logan just couldn't sleep during the daytime after he was already fully awake, sick or not. "Well, I might as well watch some tv since I promised mom that I wouldn't get on the computer." He glanced over at his alarm clock on the nightstand next to his bed, which read 9:34. "Oh, well at least Maury is still on."

Logan flipped on his tv, and changed the channel. As usual, today's episode of Maury was about mothers wanting to know if their boyfriends or husbands are the fathers of their children, and the men were always denying it. These episodes always gave Logan a good laugh when he needed it, but now wasn't the time. After seeing one man start dancing all over the place after finding out that he wasn't the father, Logan chuckled a bit, which sent him into a fit of coughing. "Man, I really need something to calm my throat down."

Logan untucked himself, pushed his feet over the side of the bed and finally sat himself up. Once he sat up, a wave of dizziness came over him, and a couple coughs came out. "Man, I must be sicker than I thought… Good thing mom made me stay home today." Logan slowly raised himself out of the bed using the wall as support, and headed towards the kitchen. He grabbed a glass out of the cupboard, opened the fridge and grabbed the orange juice. Figures today would be the one day that they wouldn't have pulp free orange juice in the house. "As if I don't already feel like I'm going to puke, the pulp is just going to make me feel like throwing up even more. And it's always a pain to clean out of my braces brackets." Logan headed over to the silverware drawer and grabbed the pulp strainer. This was a tedious task that he never liked doing, but sucked it up since the orange juice would help him get better. He sniffled a little bit, put the strainer over the top of the glass, and started pouring.

After what seemed like ages, Logan was finally done straining his orange juice. This better be worth it, he thought to himself as he started heading back to his room. Once he got there, he set the glass of orange juice down on his night stand and checked his phone. 10:07, and a text from Carlos that read "hey man where are you?" That was the one thing that Logan loved about Carlos, he was always the first person to check up on someone that wasn't in school. Logan replied back with a quick "home sick. mom said you and the rest of the guys can come over after school, be sure to tell them."

Once his phone had popped up with the "message sent" picture, Logan flopped down on his bed. Not wanting to pick himself back up, he struggled a bit to lean over to the nightstand to grab a tissue. After he blew his nose, he barely put any effort into throwing it into the trash bin, the tissue missing making the basket by a long shot. "This just proves why I don't play sports very well. Oh well, I'll pick it up later." He laid his head down on his pillow, and not more than two minutes later, he was fast asleep.

After what seemed like only the blink of an eye, Logan woke up. He checked his phone, 1:27, and texts from Carlos, Kendall and James. James and Kendall's texts both said "hope you feel better dude we'll see you soon," while Carlos' text said "told the guys, we're coming after school. bringing chicken soup." Opening up a reply text to Carlos, Logan entered "be sure to get some chicken soup with noodles, not rice. i have braces, remember." At least one of the boys was always forgetting that Logan had braces, since the rest of them were somehow blessed with perfect teeth and Logan had to suffer through this misery.

Logan remembered that he had a glass of orange juice on his night stand. He grabbed it, began to take a sip, and started choking and coughing. "Gross, warm orange juice," he said with a bitter taste in his mouth, and set the glass back on the night stand. He had around an hour until school let out and the rest of the boys would be coming to visit him. He looked up at his tv, and realized it was still on the same station as it was earlier when he was watching Maury, but now it was playing an informercial. Normally he couldn't stand informercials, but the one playing just happened to be his favorite.

The infomercial was for a new type of blender - a smaller, portable, less clunky version of the standard one that's in every kitchen. Logan for some reason was always fascinated with this ad. He watched it so many times that he practically knew every single word that the actors would say, every feature that was announced on it, every special offer that the announcer would project onto the audience - yet he still couldn't get enough of this ad. Before he knew it, the infomercial was over, and a midday news show had started. "Well, at least this is something to watch since there's not much usually on during the day," he thought to himself. "Maybe they'll have some cool medical story on."

Sitting through the half hour midday news show, there weren't any stories that caught his eye - all he learned was a new way to make sandwiches from the food segment. Starting to doze off a little bit, Logan could hear the sound of a key unlocking front door, the front door opening and closing downstairs, and the sound of talking going on, which startled him and woke him up.

"Who's down there?" he tried calling out, but his sore throat prevented him from getting his voice from going above a quiet version of his average speaking voice. Logan could hear the voices getting closer and closer to his room, when suddenly Carlos, James and Kendall barged into his room. All three of the boys gathered around Logan and started talking to him at once, all a mixture of "How're you doing buddy? How're you feeling?" Logan was glad that they all cared about how he was feeling, but all this attention on him was starting to make his head hurt.

"I've felt way better," Logan responded, hoping that it would finally get them to be quiet. "We brought you some chicken soup, just like we said," Carlos said as he offered the bowl filled with soup to Logan.

"….And of course it has rice in it." Logan sighed. "I've told you guys plenty of times that rice gets stuck in my braces."

James winced a little bit, and responded "Oh yeah…. I'm sorry about that buddy, it's my fault."

"That's fine dude. I'm just glad you guys could come over."

"It's the least we could do," Kendall smiled. "We just hope you make a speedy recovery. We don't want this affecting your doctor career in the future."

"I know right? I tried telling my mom that earlier today, and she was all 'nah, no it won't'."

Carlos, Kendall and James ended up staying with Logan for roughly an hour more, getting him anything he needed before they decided to take off. They all said their goodbyes, and once again saying they hoped Logan would make a speedy recovery. Once they left, Logan set down the almost finished bowl of soup down on the nightstand, sighed, mumbled "I hate getting rice stuck in my braces…" and dozed back off to sleep.


End file.
